Michel Roux Jr was born in 1960 in Pembury, Kent, where his father Albert Roux worked as a private chef for the Cazalet family. His earliest food memories are the smells of the Fairlawne kitchen – pastry, sugar caramelizing and stews – where he played under the table while his father and mother Monique prepared the meals.

After deciding to follow in his father’s footsteps, he left school at 16 for the first of several challenging apprenticeships at Maître Patissier, Hellegouarche in Paris from 1976 to 1979. He was then Commis de Cuisine at Alain Chapel’s signature restaurant at Mionay near Lyon, Michel’s biggest influence. His military service was spent in the kitchens at the Elysée Palace at the time of Presidents Giscard d’Estaing and François Mitterrand. He also spent time at Boucherie Lamartine and Charcuterie Mothu in Paris, and the Gavvers Restaurant in London.

After a stint at the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong he returned to London and worked at La Tante Claire before joining the family business. He took over running Le Gavroche in 1991, gradually changing the style of cooking to his own – classic French with a lighter, modern twist.

Michel opened Roux at Parliament Square in May 2010 with Restaurant Associates, part of the Compass Group UK and Ireland. And in November 2010, he opened Roux at The Landau at London’s prestigious luxury hotel, The Langham.

Michel is a judge and presenter on the BBC’s popular prime time show, MasterChef: The Professionals, and has been a presenter on all three series of ‘Great British Food Revival.’ Michel also recently fronted the highly anticipated return of BBC2’s ‘Food and Drink,’ and presented a documentary on Escoffier, whose revolutionary approach to fine cuisine has inspired Michel and many others.

He is involved with the Roux Experience courses at the ‘Cactus Kitchens’ cookery school, with the Executive producer of Saturday Kitchen, Amanda Ross. Cactus Kitchens offers people the opportunity to learn to cook within small intimate groups from some of the UK’s finest chefs, on site above the Saturday Kitchen studios.

Michel is a keen sportsman and he ran his nineteenth marathon in 2013, to raise funds for VICTA a charity supporting visually impaired children. He is also an honorary member of the Harlequins rugby club.

More information about Michel and organisations that he's involved with can be found from the links below:

One of the inalienable rules of family businesses is that sons always want to do things differently from the way their fathers did them, and fathers always insist on interfering after they've 'officially' retired. Has this been true at Le Gavroche? John Radford talked to Michel Roux jr.

'No, No and no.' 'Well, perhaps a bit, and not as much now as at first, and not necessarily.' What was the third question again? Is he chasing the return of the third Michelin star? It's a bit too complicated to explain in a few words, so we'll return to it later and start at the beginning instead.

Michel Albert Roux is known as 'Michel junior' to avoid confusion with his uncle Michel (of The Waterside Inn) and it's just as well that 'Michel senior' called his own son Alain and not Albert as this would have been hopelessly confusing. Michel junior was born in England in 1960, seven years before his father and his uncle first established Le Gavroche, and he thinks he was always destined to cook. Certainly his education was steered that way pretty effectively from the age of sixteen, when he was apprenticed to Maitre Patissier Hellegouarch in Paris. Patisserie, as many great chefs will tell you, is the best way to start in the cookery business.

After three years, having learned the basics in Paris, he worked under his father in the kitchen of (the original) Le Gavroche for six months as a lowly commis de cuisine, leaving just before his twentieth birthday for a two-year stint with the legendary Alain Chapel at his eponymous hotel and restaurant in Mionnay, in the Rhone-Alpes region of France. Michel admits that Chapel was one of the most significant influences on his style and work, and that these were the formative years of what he has been able to achieve since.

It was back to London and (the new) Le Gavroche at the beginning of 1982 for three months, learning his way around the new kitchen before military service intervened. Michel spent this (as did his cousin Alain, now at The Waterside Inn) cooking at the Elysee Palace in Paris during the tenure of Presidents Valerv Giscard d'Estaing and Francois Mitterand - the French armed forces are as serious about cookery as everybody else in France, but it does make you wonder what he'd have cooked up for the troops if he'd ever been called out on active service. After ten months serving up staff meals and working on the odd state banquet, Michel spent March and April of 1983 learning about meat at the famous Gerard Mothu in St-Mande in the Paris banlieu, before extending his knowledge for a further three months with one of the most respected charcutiers in Paris: Boucherie Lamartine on the Avenue Victor Hugo.

By this time Michel had been schooled in most aspects of food and cookery but, just for good measure, he spent August of 1983 working for Finlay Robertson Chartered Accountants in London, to make sure that he also had some idea of what's involved in balancing the books.

His first 'senior' post came next: five months as sous-chef at Gavvers, the restaurant which had been the original Le Gavroche, but there was still more to learn. In January 1984 he moved to La Tante Claire in Chelsea, going back to the rank of commis but working with one of London's greatest chefs, Pierre Koffmann. He stayed there until August and spent the rest of the year at the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong - one of the world's most luxurious hotels and now known as the Mandarin Oriental.

Michel returned to England at the beginning of 1985 and spent the next four months working with his Uncle Michel at The Waterside Inn in Bray. In May 1985 he turned 26 and, you might think was ready to take on a bit more responsibility in the kitchen. Indeed he was, but not yet at Le Gavroche. At that time the Roux brothers - Albert and Michel sr. - had a small catering empire which included not only The Waterside Inn and Le Gavroche but also Gavvers, Le Poulbot, Rouxl Britannia and Le Gamin as well as contract-catering and specialist patisserie companies. Michel jr worked as chef there for five years, coping with the financial, management, logistic and culinary deadlines inherent in such a business, during which time he had more then enough opportunity to experience almost everything that the restaurant business can throw in the way of a chef-manager.

In 1990 Albert turned 55 and decided that, perhaps, it was time for his son to take 'over the reins at Le Gavroche. This coincided with a restructuring of the Roux 'empire', with the peripheral business being sold and Michel Sr. taking over sole ownership and responsibility for The Waterside Inn, whilst Albert did the same at Le Gavroche. So finally, at the age of just 31, Michel Albert Roux became chef de cuisine in place of his father.

'They were big boots to fill' says Michel. 'And my style of cookery is different from that of my father.' He describes Albert as being the archetypal 'classical-bourgeois' chef: very traditional but, 'of course, he was trained in a different era, and London in 1967 - or 1977 or even 1987 - was a very different place from a restaurant point of view compared with today'. Michel wanted to be a bit more inventive - to offer something new as well as the classic dishes which had made the restaurant famous without sacrificing any of the quality; to make the service more 'client-friendly' without losing its professionalism or efficiency. Did Albert approve?

'He still eats here regularly', says Michel, 'and he always says exactly what he thinks. These days, he has a bit less to say than he used to...' And what about the stars, those coveted, gold-plated Michelin stars? They are not, of course, awarded to the restaurant, they are awarded to the chef, and when a chef changes restaurants - or a restaurant changes chefs - the inspectors come again and often to see whether and how things have changed. In the event, three stars became two - still a pretty good accolade for a chef in his early thirties, and Michel is perfectly relaxed about that.

'Three stars can be like cooking in handcuffs.' He says - the discipline of maintaining exactly the same standards in exactly the same dishes can become very boring. He likes to experiment, and the Michelin inspectors get very worried about that, but with two stars he can continue the gentle evolution in what Le Gavroche does without frightening away loyal customers. 'I want to delight them and surprise them, but it has to be done with the guarantee of quality which people have come to expect of Le Gavroche.'

Then there's the clientele: Michel disparages the food-anoraks who go to all the three-starred restaurants in the world 'just to get their passport stamped so they can say they've been.' Michel wants a restaurant which is busy, full of people who are there for the love of good food and wine and who will come and enjoy again.

Written by John Radford. Originally published in Vivace [a way of life].

More information about Albert Roux and restaurants that he's involved with can be found from the link below:

Opens Roux at Parliament Square with Restaurant Associates, and Roux at The Landau at The Langham Hotel with father Albert

2011

Presenter on BBC's 'Service' and 'Great British Food Revival', launches range of Global knives, and launches GreenPan range of saucepans with The Cookware Company

2012

Presenter on 'The First Master Chef: Michel Roux Jr on Escoffier', and featured in 'The Roux Legacy' on the Good Food channel

2013

Presenter BBC's 'Food and Drink' and 'The Chef's Protégé'

November 2013

New book 'The French Kitchen' was published - 'In the French Kitchen, there is a wonderful respect for food; it is something to be savoured and enjoyed. Michel Roux Jr's stunning cookbook embraces the culinary alchemy of French food'